The Suicide Squad — Ending Explained

The film subverts expectations immediately by opening with Team A (Savant, Rick Flag, Captain Boomerang, Mongal), only to reveal Waller used them as cannon fodder to allow Team B (Bloodsport's unit) to slip onto Corto Maltese undetected.

Inside Jotunheim, Task Force X learns that Starro was captured decades earlier by American astronauts, and the US government secretly financed The Thinker's 30 years of horrific human experiments. The squad's real mission was to erase evidence of American complicity rather than protect the locals. When Rick Flag attempts to release the incriminating hard drive to the press, Peacemaker acts on Waller's secret secondary orders and stabs Flag through the heart. Bloodsport retaliates by shooting Peacemaker through the throat with a precision smaller-caliber bullet.

Starro breaks free, tears The Thinker apart, and releases mind-controlling spores across the island. Defying Waller's orders to abandon the civilians—while Waller's staff knocks her unconscious to assist them—the squad battles the titan. Polka-Dot Man damages Starro before being crushed, Harley pierces the eye with the javelin, and Cleo commands millions of rats to devour the alien from the inside out. Bloodsport blackmails Waller with the drive to secure the team's freedom, while post-credits reveal Weasel and Peacemaker both survived their injuries.

The film invites multiple critical lenses:

• Anti-Imperialist Satire vs. Escapism: Viewed as an overt satire of US covert foreign intervention in Latin America, where governments destabilize nations and discard casualties to bury black-ops records, while other viewers read it strictly as an anarchic, dark-comedy exploitation thrill ride.
• Starro as the Real Victim: Interpreted as an innocent victim of institutional human torture rather than an evil invader, having been abducted from space and subjected to 30 years of biological experimentation by The Thinker and the US government.
• Critique of the Superhero Genre: By weaponizing absurd comic figures to overthrow state-sanctioned horrors, the film deconstructs traditional pristine superhero tropes, suggesting genuine justice comes only from dismantling systemic authority.